The Southern Movies series explores images of the South in modern films as well as how those images affect American perspectives on the region.

The Southern goofball sex comedy Incoming Freshmen from 1979 indulges in the wild college campus motif. Its tagline reads, “An innocent girl from a small town arrives at a modern institution of education to complete her studies. Once there she starts various relationships with different boys.” The story lies somewhere among 1978’s Animal House, 1981’s Porky’s, and 1983’s Meatballs, but this one is of much lower quality. Written and directed by Eric Lewald, who hailed from Georgia and Tennessee, Incoming Freshmen is a lighthearted spoof of the college experience in the South in the late 1970s.

Incoming Freshmen opens with scenes of move-in day and registration at a college. All of the students and employees are white. While our main character signs in and looks for her room, we see a couple making out and slowly undressing. Eventually the young woman, who has been our focus for most of the time the credits are rolling, walks in on the half naked couple. She looks shocked and runs away. Her roommate jumps up and calls after her, but the interloper is long gone. While she gets dressed, the young man there basically ignores her while she explains the tribulations of living with a prude. Out on the sidewalk, the sexy co-ed assures her fleeing roommate that everything is OK, and the two return to their room arm in arm.

The next scene brings us to a classroom for a freshman orientation lecture. Students, male and female, pile in. A stern looking woman in a military or police uniform enters first, and she is followed by a very fat male professor. For some reason, a bell rings to start class, as though it’s high school. While the rotund professor says a word of welcome, he undresses one student with his eyes, then yields the floor to the uniformed woman, who is from the ROTC. As she speaks, he imagines her undressed as well. Once the ROTC talk is done, he invites the female students to leave, then admonishes the male students to stop the tradition of hanging a condom on his office door. For an old perv, he certainly is prudish, too.

Moving on from his antics, we meet a small group of young men – most white, one black – and they’re talking about meeting girls. Meanwhile, back in the dorm room, the free-spirited roommate Viv is explaining to the prudish roommate Jane about swimming in the “veritable ocean of masculinity” on campus. Viv says that a girl has to just keep trying them out until she finds the one that’s right for her. Wouldn’t that mean that everyone was dating everyone else, the prude asks. Well, yes. And we have our film’s premise. While one roommate explains that college is for trying new things, the other says that she wants mostly female friends, possibly a few boys too but only as friends. She has a boyfriend back in Sweetbriar – presumably the small town she’s from – so there won’t be much dating. Just then two other girls pop in, chattering and smiling. They are wearing sweatshirts for their sorority, Delta Pi, and certainly we get the sexual innuendo of the name. The main benefit of their sorority getting lots of dates.

Across campus, the dean runs into Dr Bilpo, the portly professor from the orientation lecture. After the two men ogle a co-ed who passes by, the dean asks Bilpo to check out a situation that has come up. Apparently, some male students have managed to make a peep hole to see into the girls’ locker room. “I’ll look into it,” says Bilpo. He knocks on the door and calls inside, but no one answers. Of course, he goes in, and while he’s there, a black janitor arrives to clean up. The janitor is muttering to himself about he hates his work. Bilpo tries to hide in the showers to avoid being found, but the janitor turns on the waters and drenches the big man. He comes out fussing, and the janitor responds with equal venom. But the stage is set for the salacious academic to go back later for another look.

In the next scene, the two female freshmen discuss how Jane won’t go on dates or consider other boys because she’s dating Steve. Viv tries to convince her that the world is larger than her hometown of Sweetbriar. But Jane insists, she and Steve have been together for two-and-a-half years and he wouldn’t even look at other girls. After this conversation, in which nothing about the story moves forward, Jane is back in her dorm, waiting on a phone call from Steve. Another girl on the hall tells her that she doesn’t have to wait by the phone, that Steve will never know that she’s dating other boys. But that just won’t do, Jane will wait and doesn’t want other boys. In the bathroom, the second young woman introduces herself – she’s Christy – and Jane is so glad to make a new friend. Poor Christy then has to listen to more boring anecdotes about Steve and Sweetbriar. During their conversation, Christy intimates that she’s a feminist or a lesbian, or both, by claiming that men aren’t worth it and before long won’t even be necessary. When Viv returns from her night out, Jane is crying in her bed because Steve never did call.

Well, Steve found a new girlfriend: Jane’s best friend Cindy back home. After a good talking-to from Viv, Jane calls her best friend since it’s too late to call her parents. And Steve is there, smooching on his new lady. Cindy explains that things change when a girl goes away to college. Jane is hurt, and Viv is there to say an unkind word to Steve and to show Jane a new path forward. For a girl who spreads the love around, Viv sure doesn’t like it when another girl does it.

Back in class Dr. Bilpo is teaching history. He sits behind a desk and insults the students’ intelligence before informing them they’ll have a pop quiz . . . but only for one student. A single one of them has to stand up and put pushpins into the map where the capitals of Europe are. An attractive young woman gets up to do that, and as she does, Bilpo imagines her undressing for him. After class, he shakes his head and remarks that his mind just doesn’t seem to be on history lately.

The scenes that follow are pretty pointless and kind of strange. In the evening, some of the guys try taking girls to the drive-in, where a dirty movie is playing. Nothing happens, and once again, the conversation turns to how to get some. For some reason, the young men think that hot buttered popcorn is an aphrodisiac. Later, Viv and Jane are talking in the bathroom, while they get ready for the day, and Jane is regretful that her first date went poorly. Then, we see the clumsy boy Randy who she was with at the drive-in, and he’s getting advice, too. Somehow a girl in the tube top that they saw hitchhiking turns into a fantasy that involves some uncomfortable images of squirting toothpaste. Finally, we’re back to Viv and Jane who are going to class.

Then, the insatiable Dr. Bilpo is back at it. We see him creeping into the locker room again, ostensibly to catch the peephole guys, but really, he’s the voyeur. The next ten minutes of the film are spent with Bilpo trying to hide when a group of girls come in the locker room to change and shower. He escapes by wrapping himself in towels and a robe, covering his mustache, and claiming to be Edna, a substitute phys ed instructor.

Out on the green, Jane runs into Randy, the clumsy boy whose buttered popcorn trick didn’t work at the drive-in. He apologizes, and she tells him that it’s OK. She tries to appease him by saying that the movie was good. Randy tells her that next week there’s a double feature, then lists three movie titles. Like the other meaningless conversations so far, this one ends too and the characters move on.

We’re just about the halfway point in the film now. Viv and Jane go over to a get-together at the Delta Pi sorority house, and there’s more pointless, semi-comedic conversation. One girl says she’s a double major in Phys Ed and Philosophy, and several remark proudly that they bake brownies for underprivileged children. Across campus, the guys have their binoculars and are watching a girl shower. We see by the end of the scene that she knows they’re watching and smiles at them as she gets dressed.

Back in class, Bilpo is imagining his students naked . . . again. First, it’s two cheerleaders when he mentions “the big game” this weekend. Then it’s a different student who punches him and yells about the Boxer Rebellion. Then he drops his glasses, and a third becomes topless in picking them up. Frustrated and scatterbrained, Bilpo cancels class, but not before being mooned (in his mind) by a hairy-assed male student in response to a comment about chapter 23’s content: a rear-action offensive.

Back to our main plot, Jane is wondering what to do about Randy. She likes him but doesn’t want him to think that she’ll have sex with him. Viv, who at this point is barely interested in Jane’s waffling about sex, suggests that they go to a new disco that’s just opening. Good for them, the guys decide to go, too. The next few minutes are shots of people dancing under flashing colored lights with ’70s music playing loudly. The few interchanges of dialogue, including a guy who gets rejected by table full of girls, are pretty pointless. We learn that Randy has just learned to drink beer and that he plans to take Jane back to the room later. During a weird interchange, in which three guys try to take Jane from Randy by bullying him out of the way, we learn about somebody named Earl, who is Christy’s boyfriend. Later, on the couch, Randy gets rejected again . . .

As if Incoming Freshmen couldn’t get any weirder and more inane, next comes something like a therapy session with Christy, who force-feeds Jane candies while she tries to hypnotize her into accept Randy’s advances. Though it happens off camera, we understand from the moaning and gasping that Christy’s dirty descriptions end up turning her on, and she’s masturbating. Back across campus, Jane heads back into her room and talks with Viv about Christy suggestion that she get involved with “consciousness raising” — i.e drugs – then Jane is walking across campus and knocks a guy off his crutches accidentally and for no apparent reason.

In the classroom, Dr. Bilpo is at it again. By now, he is disheveled and weary and mumbling about his inability to get his mind off of naked women. Frustrated and exhausted, he dismisses himself from class, rather than the students, after going through his array of imaginings.

Now, we get one of the first scenes that actually has something to do with the South: a college football game. Viv and Jane are getting to go with Phil and Randy, and Viv announces that the best sex she ever had was after their team beat Alabama. But the two girls plan to skip out early and head for another gathering, where someone has rented a chalet off campus. After a few scenes of stock footage and some bad jokes from a phony announcer, we’re back to our old familiar: the girls in the locker room, and here comes Bilpo. For some reason, they startle him into entering the locker room, where he finds them stripped down to their panties and wearing pig masks. The group half-dozen girls then shoves him into a shower stall and douse him good.

What remains of the film – about twenty minutes – continues in the trajectory of the earlier portions. Viv and Jane ditch Phil and Randy after the game, despite the boys’ protests. They load up in the car and head for the “consciousness raising” party. Here an array of strange scene parade by, some of the containing the same level of egregious female nudity that we’ve already seen. Surprisingly, Dr. Bilpo is there at the party, and he has shed his Southern professor garb for something more beatnicky. At one point, a loudmouthed character tries to fit as many almost-naked people as he can into a phone booth. There’s a band whose members are wearing masks (horses? rats?) and playing bluesy rock. By the end, it is clear that everyone is stoned, drunk, or both . . . and who is it that ultimately convinces Jane to let loose? Dr. Bilpo. Who comes to her in dark sunglasses and says, “Let’s dance,” while blowing pot smoke. As he walks away, Jane takes out her pig tails, swings her hair loose, and with a smile, enters the fray. Then the credits roll.

Incoming Freshmen is a truly stupid film. The acting is bad, the premise plays on stereotypes, the portrayals are cardboard . . . and the purpose is evident: to show naked women. It rates a weak 4.2 on IMDb, and that’s even kind of generous. However, its billing as a drive-in feature explains some things about it. Movies that would have be today considered softcore porn or “skin flicks” were often shown at drive-ins and other cheap movie theaters in late night showings. The drive-in audience was usually couples in cars, while the late-night moviegoers were often men who were alone. Were they there to learn more about Southern culture? Not hardly.

In the 1970s, a plethora of these drive-in and late-night films were made, and some, like 1967’s Shanty Tramp and this one, employed Southern tropes. Also among those were “hicksploitation” porn films, like Country Cuzzins, Southern Comforts, and The Pig Keeper’s Daughter. To be frank, the Southern tropes in these are only a pretense for pointing to nudity or a sex act— what difference did it make, really? Yet, these films and the theaters that showed them drew a political response. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Southern politicians and attorneys general waged campaigns against “smut,” which were mildly effective; though these office-holding do-gooders gained some ground for the Moral Majority, they were often stymied by judges who respected First Amendment concerns. What eventually ended this trend was not politicians, statutes, policing, or community groups. The widespread use of the VCR, then the DVD player, then the internet allowed people to watch dirty movies at home, where they wouldn’t be arrested for masturbating in public.

Getting back to the Southern-ness of Incoming Freshmen, did it matter that this was set in the South? No. I’ve listed a few movies already – sex comedies and skin flicks from the period – but it’s also worth mentioning that this film was made during era of mainstream Southern goofball comedies, like 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit, and that it premiered the same year as the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, in 1979. You see, all of the cheap knockoffs weren’t nudie movies: Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws from 1978 and Georgia Peaches from 1981, as examples. So, why make a sex comedy about Southern co-eds in search of a hookup, about a shy small-town Southern girl, and about a lecherous Southern professor who sneaks into the girls’ locker room? The question, for these filmmakers, was probably: why not?